To the department officials, like my colleagues, I'm struggling a little bit with the call for the briefs to come in to the department. I assume that the original intent of those briefs coming in was to inform the minister in advance of this. Where in that equation was the plan to inform this committee? Was there a plan to do that?

The first purpose of the consultation was to get information and opinion in order to inform the minister and to help departmental officials, such as myself, to provide our recommendations. It's common, although there is not a hard and fast policy, to share those submissions publicly. We think it's a good approach and we are planning on doing that.

In some cases, we do not publish the submissions, although those who submit are free to publish them on their own. In other cases, we make them available to the general public, and so in that way to the committee members.

I look back to how our government—I don't expect departmental officials to respond to this—has said that we did so well in the recession because of the regulation factor.

In fact, I'll turn it on its head just a little. I will ask you a question. The call for submissions, the activity from the minister's office, was that generally solely because Economical wanted to make this change, or were there other groups calling for the same kind of change?